Arriving in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA) and our first BIG chubasco

(Trisha's blog)
On August 13th we arrived in BLA which will be our "home base" for the next few months while we wait out hurricane season and explore the northern Sea of Cortez. We had planned to visit many anchorages along the way between Bahia San Francisquito and BLA but plans change. We had a part that needed to be welded in order to run our generator. We contacted a few cruising friends to see if there was a welder in BLA and Patrick on Just a Minute saved the day. Patrick hooked us up with a couple who live in BLA that offered to help us out. We anchored in front of their house on La Mona and dingied in. We were driven in their 4-wheeler into BLA village five miles across some very rustic roads. I was struck by the beauty of the surrounding area both by land and sea; it reminds me so much of Death Valley (one of my favorite places). We accomplished our mission by finding a welder who not only fixed our problem but strengthened the weld. We have found the Mexicans to be hugely resourceful, being able to make do with available materials and able to repair most anything. In addition to the repair, we also got a grand tour of the village and stopped at each tienda and picked up a few provisions.

Feeling good about the accomplishments of the day, we retired to the boat for a relaxing evening. About 10pm, the winds began increasing very rapidly and within 10 minutes there were 30-35 knots. We were about to experience our first big chubasco. A chubasco is a summertime convection storm that can be accompanied by high winds, thunder, lightning and rain. In a short time the winds were increasing to 40 and 50 knots and the lightning was all around us. The best was yet to come; we saw several gusts of 60-62 knots before things were to begin calming down. (Note: To put things in perspective, a hurricane category 1 has winds of 64-82 knots) In all, the high winds lasted about 1 ½ hours and the rain was not even enough to fully clean the boat. Whew! It's good to have our first chubasco in the rear view mirror. We came through it okay, no damage and we took note of a few things we might do differently if and when the next one hits.

We plan on spending a few more days here in BLA before heading to some of the anchorages we passed on our way here. Also to hook up with our friends Pam and Rick on Hotel California who have returned from the states and are heading this way. Our Baja Rummy skills have improved greatly since we saw them last!

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Bahia San Francisquito

Interabang was ready to make the eighty mile passage from Santa Rosalia to Bahia San Francisquito on Friday, July 27. The plan was to leave late at night expecting to arrive at our destination in the middle of the afternoon the following day. We shared our plans with Tom and Jeanne on Eagle and they wanted to buddy boat with us with one stipulation. In order to avoid the bad luck associated with leaving port on a Friday, we would postpone our departure to just past midnight, thereby technically leaving on Saturday morning. Bill and Lisa on Beyond Reason just happened to be leaving at the same time so we had three buddy boats. The passage was uneventful until the last four or five miles. The guidebook warned of strong currents possible in the channel outside of San Francisquito and we found this to be an understatement. As we neared the channel we noticed big waves with whitecaps ahead. Upon entering the rough water we found confused seas with large waves, some as high as eight feet, coming at us from multiple directions. Navigating the channel was slow going with the boat bucking and rolling wildly for about thirty minutes. Once through the slop, it was a short two miles to the anchorage where we joined three other boats. Our friends Kyra and Rick on Nyon and John on Time Piece arrived a couple of days later.

Unfortunately, we arrived at San Francisquito with a water maker problem. The feed pump had burned up during the trip and we would soon be out of fresh water. I studied each of the spare and installed pumps on the boat trying to find one that would meet the specifications but had no luck. Remembering that Tom on Eagle was a water maker service guy, I gave him a call on the radio. Lucky for us Tom had a spare pump that would get us by. Awesome! We fired off and email to Rick and Pam on Hotel California. They were visiting family back home in California. They saved the day again by agreeing to pick up a replacement pump and bring it back to Mexico for us.

San Francisquito presented us with the first opportunity to use the spear gun. On my first time out, I came home with three opal eye. The friendly fish are available in large numbers and are an easy mark. Comparing notes with other cruisers, we learned that the opal eye was essentially a 'B List' fish. "Good for tacos" someone said. Trisha encouraged me to target more tasty species and leave the opal eyes. With coaching from Rick on Nyon and Tom on Eagle, I was soon able to identify and hunt the fish on the 'A List.' I bagged twenty fish during our stay including chubs, grunts, porgy, and three of the highly prized and delicious leopard groupers.

San Francisquito also provided us with our first chubasco experience. A chubasco is a big thunderstorm with scary high winds that come at night. As we have learned, the flashing lightning generated by the chubascos can be seen coming from far away warning of their arrival. We had a rather light chubasco with winds peeking in the mid-thirty knot range. The winds were a little scary and the continuous lightning was amazing. We saw any form of lightning you can imagine from large bolts shooting straight to the ground, to long streaks across the sky, to wide fans of little bolts that filled the sky like fireworks. It was a scary night with an amazing show.

After a little over two weeks in San Francisquito our stay abruptly came to an end when we had a part fail on our generator.

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